Plutarch’s Lives

Comparison of Aristides with Marcus Cato

Translated by John Dryden
and
Revised by Arthur Hugh Clough

Having mentioned the most memorable
actions of these great men, if we now compare the whole life of the one
with that of the other, it will not be easy to discern the difference
between them, lost as it is amongst such a number of circumstances in
which they resemble each other. If, however, we examine them in detail
as we might some piece of poetry, or some picture, we shall find this
common to them both, that they advanced themselves to great honor and
dignity in the commonwealth, by no other means than their own virtue
and industry. But it seems when Aristides appeared, Athens was not at
its height of grandeur and plenty, the chief magistrates and officers
of his time being men only of moderate and equal fortunes among
themselves. The estimate of the greatest estates then, was five hundred
medimns; that of the second, or knights, three hundred; of the third
and last called Zeugitæ, two hundred. But Cato, out of a petty village
from a country life, leaped into the commonwealth, as it were into a
vast ocean; at a time when there were no such governors as the Curii,
Fabricii, and Hostilii. Poor laboring men were not then advanced from
the plow and spade to be governors and magistrates; but greatness of
family, riches, profuse gifts, distributions, and personal application
were what the city looked to; keeping a high hand, and, in a manner,
insulting over those that courted preferment. It was not as great a
matter to have Themistocles for an adversary, a person of mean
extraction and small fortune, (for he was not worth, it is said, more
than four or five talents when he first applied himself to public
affairs,) as to contest with a Scipio Africanus, a Servius Galba, and a
Quintius Flamininus, having no other aid but a tongue free to assert
right.

Besides, Aristides at Marathon, and again at Platæa, was but one
commander out of ten; whereas Cato was chosen consul with a single
colleague, having many competitors, and with a single colleague, also,
was preferred before seven most noble and eminent pretenders to be
censor. But Aristides was never principal in any action; for Miltiades
carried the day at Marathon, at Salamis Themistocles, and at Platæa,
Herodotus tells us, Pausanias got the glory of that noble victory: and
men like Sophanes, and Aminias, Callimachus, and Cynægyrus, behaved
themselves so well in all those engagements, as to contest it with
Aristides even for the second place. But Cato not only in his
consulship was esteemed the chief in courage and conduct in the Spanish
war, but even whilst he was only serving as tribune at Thermopylæ,
under another’s command, he gained the glory of the victory, for
having, as it were, opened a wide gate for the Romans to rush in upon
Antiochus, and for having brought the war on his back, whilst he only
minded what was before his face. For that victory, which was beyond
dispute all Cato’s own work, cleared Asia out of Greece, and by that
means made way afterwards for Scipio into Asia. Both of them, indeed,
were always victorious in war; but at home Aristides stumbled, being
banished and oppressed by the faction of Themistocles; yet Cato,
notwithstanding he had almost all the chief and most powerful of Rome
for his adversaries, and wrestled with them even to his old age, kept
still his footing. Engaging also in many public suits, sometimes
plaintiff, sometimes defendant, he cast the most, and came off clear
with all; thanks to his eloquence, that bulwark and powerful instrument
to which more truly, than to chance or his fortune, he owed it, that he
sustained himself unhurt to the last. Antipater justly gives it as a
high commendation to Aristotle the philosopher, writing of him after
his death, that among his other virtues, he was endowed with a faculty
of persuading people which way he pleased.

Questionless, there is no perfecter endowment in man than
political virtue, and of this Economics is commonly esteemed not the
least part; for a city, which is a collection of private households,
grows into a stable commonwealth by the private means of prosperous
citizens that compose it. Lycurgus by prohibiting gold and silver in
Sparta, and making iron, spoiled by the fire, the only currency, did
not by these measures discharge them from minding their household
affairs, but cutting off luxury, the corruption and tumor of riches, he
provided there should be an abundant supply of all necessary and useful
things for all persons, as much as any other lawmaker ever did; being
more apprehensive of a poor, needy, and indigent member of a community,
than of the rich and haughty. And in this management of domestic
concerns, Cato was as great as in the government of public affairs; for
he increased his estate, and became a master to others in economy and
husbandry; upon which subjects he collected in his writings many useful
observations. On the contrary Aristides, by his poverty, made justice
odious, as if it were the pest and impoverisher of a family and
beneficial to all, rather than to those that were endowed with it. Yet
Hesiod urges us alike to just dealing and to care of our households,
and inveighs against idleness as the origin of injustice; and Homer
admirably says:—

“Work was not dear, nor household cares to me,
Whose increase rears the thriving family;
But well-rigged ships were always my delight,
And wars, and darts, and arrows of the fight:”

as if the same characters carelessly neglected their own
estates, and lived by injustice and rapine from others. For it is not
as the physicians say of oil, that outwardly applied, it is very
wholesome, but taken inwardly detrimental, that thus a just man
provides carefully for others, and is heedless of himself and his own
affairs: but in this Aristides’s political virtues seem to be
defective; since, according to most authors, he took no care to leave
his daughters a portion, or himself enough to defray his funeral
charges: whereas Cato’s family produced senators and generals to the
fourth generation; his grandchildren, and their children, came to the
highest preferments. But Aristides, who was the principal man of
Greece, through extreme poverty reduced some of his to get their living
by juggler’s tricks, others, for want, to hold out their hands for
public alms; leaving none means to perform any noble action, or worthy
his dignity.

Yet why should this needs follow? since poverty is dishonorable
not in itself, but when it is a proof of laziness, intemperance,
luxury, and carelessness; whereas in a person that is temperate,
industrious, just, and valiant, and who uses all his virtues for the
public good, it shows a great and lofty mind. For he has no time for
great matters, who concerns himself with petty ones; nor can he relieve
many needs of others, who himself has many needs of his own. What most
of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and
independence; which, requiring no superfluity at home, distracts not
the mind from the common good. God alone is entirely exempt from all
want: of human virtues, that which needs least, is the most absolute
and most divine. For as a body bred to a good habit requires nothing
exquisite either in clothes or food, so a sound man and a sound
household keep themselves up with a small matter. Riches ought to be
proportioned to the use we have of them; for he that scrapes together a
great deal, making use of but little, is not independent; for if he
wants them not, it is folly in him to make provision for things which
he does not desire; or if he does desire them, and restrains his
enjoyment out of sordidness, he is miserable. I would fain know of Cato
himself, if we seek riches that we may enjoy them, why is he proud of
having a great deal, and being contented with little? But if it be
noble, as it is, to feed on coarse bread, and drink the same wine with
our hinds, and not to covet purple, and plastered houses, neither
Aristides, nor Epaminondas, nor Manius Curius, nor Caius Fabricius
wanted necessaries, who took no pains to get those things whose use
they approved not. For it was not worth the while of a man who esteemed
turnips a most delicate food, and who boiled them himself, whilst his
wife made bread, to brag so often of a halfpenny, and write a book to
show how a man may soonest grow rich; the very good of being contented
with little is because it cuts off at once the desire and the anxiety
for superfluities. Hence Aristides, it is told, said, on the trial of
Callias, that it was for them to blush at poverty, who were poor
against their wills; they who like him were willingly so, might glory
in it. For it is ridiculous to think Aristides’s neediness imputable to
his sloth, who might fairly enough by the spoil of one barbarian, or
seizing one tent, have become wealthy. But enough of this.

Cato’s expeditions added no great matter to the Roman empire,
which already was so great, as that in a manner it could receive no
addition; but those of Aristides are the noblest, most splendid, and
distinguished actions the Grecians ever did, the battles at Marathon,
Salamis, and Platæa. Nor indeed is Antiochus, nor the destruction of
the walls of the Spanish towns, to be compared with Xerxes, and the
destruction by sea and land of so many myriads of enemies; in all of
which noble exploits Aristides yielded to none, though he left the
glory and the laurels, like the wealth and money, to those who needed
and thirsted more greedily after them: because he was superior to those
also. I do not blame Cato for perpetually boasting and preferring
himself before all others, though in one of his orations he says, that
it is equally absurd to praise and dispraise one’s self: yet he who
does not so much as desire others’ praises, seems to me more perfectly
virtuous, than he who is always extolling himself. A mind free from
ambition is a main help to political gentleness: ambition, on the
contrary, is hard-hearted, and the greatest fomenter of envy; from
which Aristides was wholly exempt; Cato very subject to it. Aristides
assisted Themistocles in matters of highest importance, and, as his
subordinate officer, in a manner raised Athens: Cato, by opposing
Scipio, almost broke and defeated his expedition against the
Carthaginians, in which he overthrew Hannibal, who till then was even
invincible; and, at last, by continually raising suspicions and
calumnies against him, he chased him from the city, and inflicted a
disgraceful sentence on his brother for robbing the state.

Finally, that temperance which Cato always highly cried up,
Aristides preserved truly pure and untainted. But Cato’s marriage,
unbecoming his dignity and age, is a considerable disparagement, in
this respect, to his character. For it was not decent for him at that
age to bring home to his son and his wife a young woman, the daughter
of a common paid clerk in the public service: but whether it were for
his own gratification or out of anger at his son, both the fact and the
presence were unworthy. For the reason he pretended to his son was
false: for if he desired to get more as worthy children, he ought to
have married a well-born wife; not to have contented himself, so long
as it was unnoticed, with a woman to whom he was not married; and, when
it was discovered, he ought not to have chosen such a father-in-law as
was easiest to be got, instead of one whose affinity might be honorable
to him.